Davis family

The persons represented in this collection are ancestors of the donors, Elizabeth Allen and Sarah Davis, who are first cousins.

The Reverend Daniel Shines (1759-1843) was a Methodist circuit rider in eastern North Carolina in the 1790s. He later settled as a minister in Warrenton, N.C. Evidence in the papers indicates that he married Sarah Richmond Long, widow of Gabriel Long and mother of Rebecca Wesley Long Hill (1791-1867), who married Charles Applewhite Hill.

Charles A. Hill (1784-1832) graduated from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1816 and moved to Georgia with Rebecca. After several years there, Hill returned to North Carolina to become a Methodist minister and educator in Franklin County. He founded an academy at Midway, published a Latin grammar, and served as a state senator, devoting himself to the cause of public education.

Daniel Shine Hill (1812-1873), planter and son of Charles A. and Rebecca Hill, married Susan Erwin Toole (1815-1878), daughter of Geraldus Toole, a planter, and Elizabeth King Toole. Among the Hills' several daughters was Sarah Louisa Hill (1836-1931), who married Matthew S. Davis (1830-1906), head of the Louisburg Male Academy and president of its successor, Louisburg College. The Davises had six children. The oldest daughter, Florence, married Eugene S. Allen and was the mother of J. Edward Allen, author of some of the genealogical materials in the collection. The second daughter, Mary, served as president of Louisburg College from the time of her father's death in 1906 until 1918. She married Ivey Allen and was the mother of Elizabeth Allen, one of the donors of these papers. The third daughter, Mabel, never married; she served as librarian of Warren County; genealogy was a passion she shared with a remote relative, Nannie Seawell Boyd. One son, the Reverend Edward Hill Davis, served as a Methodist minister and the other son, Louisburg architect Marion Stuart Davis, married May Amanda Holmes and was the father of Sarah Davis, who is one of this collection's donors.

The Fuller branch of the family descended from Ann Long, who was another daughter of Gabriel Long (d. 1792) and Sarah Richmond Long (d. 1845). Ann married Jordan Thomas, and they had a daughter, Ann, who married merchant Jones Fuller (1808-1870). They had two children, poet and writer Edwin Wiley Fuller (1847-1876), who married Mary Elizabeth Malone, and Anna Richmond (d. 1934), who married James Ellis Malone. James and Elizabeth Malone were siblings. The King family appears to have become intertwined with the Hill and Davis family through the second marriage of Ann Thomas Fuller, who married William Richmond King after the death of her first husband, Jones Fuller.

Ruth Jenkins is related to the extended Hill and Davis family through her marriage to Edward Leigh Best. Best's connection to the family is through his mother, who descends from the Fuller-Malone branch of the Hill and Davis family.

Note: Most of this information is from material contained in the collection. The connections of Green Hill, Jr., John and Joel King, and the Reverend Daniel Shines with the Methodist Church are confirmed in references in The History of Methodism in North Carolina by W. L. Grissom (1905: The Publishing House of the M. E. Church (South), Nashville, Tenn.).

From the guide to the Hill and Davis Family Papers, 1768-2003, (Southern Historical Collection)